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I don't get why they release these, he's done nothing in half a decade and no self respecting person who knows anything about hardware would buy because of a so called Celeb name being put on it. It just acts as a warning sign for me...Reply

I admit that I didn't really know who Fatal1ty was before I read this article, apart from a vague recognition that the silly leet-speak moniker belonged to someone in gaming.

And I agree with your general point, that such branding on a motherboard is silly.

But all of that said, if the guy really did win $500,000 in gaming competitions, that's a pretty big deal. Now that he's retired, if companies (or, perhaps, their customers) are dumb enough to give him a comfortable living through lame marketing campaigns like ASRock's, then more power to him.

Wouldn't touch the motherboard with a ten foot pole, but I can't blame the endorser for accepting the check.

The "Fatality" branded mobos are just Asrocks high end models. They are pretty good mobos.

The issue is the marketing is dumb as are those who buy products based on this type of marketing. Clearly enough Asrock customers voiced their displeasure with the crap marketing of John Boy all over the place as Asrock removed his image from the BIOS and allows people to disable his face on the boot screen too. Owner reviews in any PC hardware forum show a lot of folks unhappy with the marketing - not the mobos. Reply

I've owned a few Fatal1ty products and all of them have been really good quality, especially the headsets and mice.

I don't think the guy will put his name on crap. And I don't think companies making crap want his name on their product, since it isn't cheap to put his name on that product and if it backfires, it'll cost them.Reply

The Creative gaming mice with his name on it weren't all that great performance-wise and were pretty much crap compared to stuff from Logitech in those days. The sound cards weren't anything special as well but cost much more than it should.Reply

I had a crap fatality branded geforce 8800gs or something, and it was uber crap. I got this as a repalcement when my 7900gs died. My 8800gs had no fan control, so it was running at 100% all the time. Very loud graphics card. I sold it after couple days.

I really don't see a point branding it with a person maybe because I don't even know or care who this dude is.Reply

I agree. I refuse to buy anything branded with that name on principle. I'm not paying extra just for branding from someone I don't even respect or care about. Hell, I would rather have a Michael Jordan* branded motherboard than a one of these.

That ignorant "principle" called being a dumb*** cheapskate with an excuse will leave you in the dust half the time, but so what you probably LOVE amd like a fanboy fool like most here. LOL - Yes all the whining fools here are freaking fanboys anyway.So since you have no clue who the guy is, wether or not you respect him is of no consequence, it's not even an opinion. Problem is, you'd likely respect him if you had a clue.Go watch some of the hour long vids - he certainly can earn your respect, I suspect it would happen. Now back to your crybaby drone whining.BTW - you an amd fanboy ? I bet you are. There's some more branding... Reply

"I don't get why they release these, he's done nothing in half a decade and no self respecting person who knows anything about hardware would buy because of a so called Celeb name being put on it. It just acts as a warning sign for me..."

Well, it works in other markets... how about Michael Jordan endorsed products? He hasn't done anything of note recently... How many other retired competitors endorse products. Carl Lewis and Greg Louganis, long since retired, endorsed products well after retirement. Phelps surely will for years to come.

If they want to pay the guy to be able to use his name...more power to them and good for him. I'm not paying the bill or buying the products, so why would I care enough to speak out against it?Reply

Look at the specs, the visuals.. than decide. the name is pretty much like any other. Asus has their line, Gigabyte.. MSI.. They all brand in one form or another to mark their high end. This is just another one is all.Reply

Though actually, I'd rather see the end of all those ridiculous brand names - "RoG", "Big Bang", "Classified", "Sniper" - none of them make any sense, and they all significantly cheapen the products they are attached to. The boards people really want are Asus Pro, Gigabyte UD9, Asrock Extreme11, and I think the lack of these stupid gamer brands is a lot of why.Reply

Sure they are. They are paying to market the RoG brand, thus increasing the price of the motherboards and other things. For example sponsoring tournaments. It's every bit the same as paying Wendel an amount for each product sold, if that's the licensing method they agreed upon.Reply

Yet the prior review Ian did with an Asrock motherboard had some overclocker bios with some guru branding and that board and bios was freaking awesome. So being a completely clueless idiot with a one size fits all mindset makes you a droning sheep like the rest of em here. Congratulations on being just as dumb (dumber really, as age an experience claimed leaves you permanently clueless) as an emotionally excited teenybopper who loves Fatal1ty.Reply

John "Fatality" is a joke and Asrock is just milking what little success John Boy had in the past.

The ignorant plastering of "Fatality" all over the mobo, heatsinks, OMs, etc. and on the BIOS and boot screen is for the 13 year old, immature, PC illiterate fanbois. Unfortunately the 13 year old kids don't represent the majority of the PC enthusiasts market so this marketing ploy to dupe the dumb, has pretty much failed. In fact their has been considerable backlash about the in-you-face display of John Boy by many Asrock consumers - to the point that Asrock has removed his Fuhly Puss from the BIOS menus completely and thankfully allows people to disable Jon Boy's face on the boot screen.

As far as the actual mobos are concerned, they are decent high end units, but nothing exceptional. They are IME as good as Asus or Gigabyte high end mobos, no more and no less. They appear to be more reliable than Asus as is Gigabyte, IME. I would recommend the Asrock Fatality models to enthusiasts for the mobo quality/performance over Asus, but not for the stupid marketing hype over John Boy.Reply

I much prefer the Asus Republic of Gamers (ROG) branding and theme. It's generic, and actually has a solid lineup that is worth the premium over the standard lineup. The Asrock Fatality brand IMO adds lots of bells and whistles that add nothing to the product that screams "worth it".Reply

celeb endorsement is a time-honored tradition and it is only getting worse. witness Beats headphones. heck, look at Air Jordans. And even for adults look at the endorsements for beer and golf clubs, etc. These companies wouldn't do it if they didn't think it paid.Reply

Warcraft 3 was bigger than Quake 3 ever was, and this is before we eve get into the massive DOTA scene. DOTA in China right now is bigger than Brood War, SC2, CS 1.6, and League Of Legends combined, and any of those individual games dwarf Quake 3 in popularity.

Grubby hasn't won anything in Starcraft 2 so far, but he's been placing higher with almost every new tournament he competes in and he is a very well liked and respected player. His name on a product would easily help to sell it.Reply

Like many high end gaming boards, these two cram on the extra features that almost no gamer would ever use.

Does anyone think that Johnny Wendel would use even half of the USB 3.0 and Sata III 6.0GB/s ports?

I don't.

Would even the most competitive gamer and power-user require such an amount of extra features for their at-home system?

Probably not.

I can see the need for extra PCIe x16 slots, for obvious reasons.....but legacy PCI slots on the Pro model is just ridiculous. Give me an extra PCIe 2.0 x1 or x4 slot instead. Get with the times, geez.

And how about these high end gaming boards with creative audio chip on-board? Right, because everyone knows it's such a great idea to have an audio amplifier mixed in with all the traces. I mean, seriously, just get rid of the extra unused PCI slots and put PCIe slots instead so I can add my own sound card....geez.Reply

Yeah, I would expect a motherboard aimed particularly at gamers to be stripped down on features, with extremely high-quality components supplying the features that are important.

The review sorta makes that very point, when it compares the Fatal1ty mobos to their Asus analogues -- quality over quantity of features.

That said, motherboards in general seem to be over-featured, and there is a segment of the market that would (understandably) balk at paying high-premium prices for a motherboard without all possible bells and whistles. But perhaps those two points only tend to suggest that motherboards are a bad fit for a pro-racer-style marketing campaign: motherboards don't tend to contribute all that much to the overall performance of a computer system, beyond a relatively low threshold of quality. Whatever difference motherboards do make tends to be overwhelmed by the performance attributes of other components, and so motherboard manufacturers feel compelled to add features to motherboards to differentiate their products from their competitors'.

Don't get me wrong: the motherboards reviewed in this article are high-end, performance-oriented parts, but they fit that description in large part because they use a socket-2011 chipset (and therefore they must be paired with a top-of-the-line CPU). That in itself is a bit of a head scratcher, IMO, because there's no compelling evidence to suggest that the LGA-2011 CPUs are noticeably better than the i7 3770k in a gaming context. Where the 2011 platform shines is in heavy-duty high-threaded workloads.

The long and the short of it is that ASRock's branding an LGA 2011 motherboard around a pro gamer is a little like a car company branding a luxury sedan around Jeff Gordon.Reply

For starters I couldn't force myself to buy any motherboard with black&red theme. Bleeeh. Red as a color make me sick. Anyway that is only personal distaste. But that is not the only thing which is wrong with those boards. 1. 8 USB3 ports. Adding so many to the back panel is nothing short of idiotic. A lot of supposedly compatible hardware of USB2 fame doesn't work when connected to USB3. Every motherboard -equipped with USB3- I tested/owned displayed same stubbornness with one device or another. Some USB2 devices just refused to work outright on USB3. Period. 2. Board which cost 350$+ and doesn't have Intel NIC = joke. 3. Professional have better balanced I/O panel, but it is also stripped down when compared to "Champion". There is nothing "Professional" about supposed professional board. 4. Endorsement by a bloke which for most modern PC users means absolutely nothing is also nothing short of laughable. I think AsRock would do better releasing "Justin Biber" board. Then maybe some brainless teens will buy it only because it is JB board. 5. Both boards also share same problem with top 16 PCI-Ex slot (of course it is not native only to those 2 products, but must be pointed out). Can't remove memory sticks without removing VGA, large dual tower coolers also can be an issue. Think before releasing product. If you desperately want quad-SLI/CF setup release XL-ATX board. On such board there is enough space for everything.

Oh and these red slots/ports, bleeeh. Did I mention that earlier? :PReply

You do know that you can insert DIMMs with just one latch moveable. Especially on these, where there is only one moveable to begin with.

Endorsement by a bloke is no more or less idiotic than every other marketing thing. From Republic of Gamers, Lanparty series boards with UV cable sleeves and a chasis carrying strap and so on. It all adds to the price of an otherwise fine board, but that's their calculation.

You also have USB 2.0 ports on the back side, for that occasional peripheral that doesn't work. Plus six of them on headers which you can, imagine the surprise, route to the back side as well. Reply

I've never purchased a fatal1ty product because often they are too expensive and show no real performance gains vs a lot less expensive competitors. Now that I know it's based on some has-been gamer. Even less likely to ever buy a product with this brand on it. This Article - greatly appreciated.Reply

I have the Z77 version of this motherboard. It's pretty solid. I didn't buy it for the marketing but for the 10 SATA ports. ASROCK does support this MB well, I recently got a BIOS update and the website support page has recent drivers updates for windows 8. Yes the board is gimmicky but so what if it has the major features I'm looking for. It's not a bad looking board either.Reply

I can't believe this BS brand is still trying. Who the hell buys this crap? Do they realize that the whole fatal1ty horseshit is making people NOT want to buy an otherwise nice board? make it stop.Reply

quote: One would also expect some form of network interface to reduce CPU consumption / prioritize gaming traffic, but rather than going the Atheros Killer route, ASRock use Broadcom NICs and software.

I wouldn't expect it. Those cards do not offer increased performance over any other networking solution, but they do cost 100 bucks more. It's a scam designed to target people who think more expensive means more better.Reply

Please people, stop purchasing anything with this branding so:a) He can stop getting pointless cuts of the profits when as others point out he hasn't done anything particularly interestingb) They will stop making this crap and put out real enthusiast boards

I'd like to actually purchase some of the upper end boards but I refuse to do based on marketing crap. If they want to brand it with someone I'd be more impressed with naming it after some awesome electrical engineer or circuit / cpu designer; heh.Reply